Popular Culture at a Quietly Human Supermarket

hope where one least expects it

For the past number of years I have made a habit of doing my food shopping at a supermarket in Wellington every Friday evening. The task is not an unpleasant one and I generally accomplish my mission in approximately twenty minutes: my wants are relatively few and regular.

At this particular supermarket, however, there are several large video screens that are ceaselessly playing older but upbeat music videos - interspersed with advertisements for store sales - that tend to arrest my attention. Michael Jackson, Tom Jones, Celine Dion, Simply Red, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, the Bee Gees, Elton John, Billy Joel, Shania Twain, ABBA ... you get the picture. I’m sure somebody has worked out an algorithm for videos that galvanize spending, and that the selected videos have been ‘focus grouped’ to provide an incentive for shoppers to grab more items off the shelves.

Thing is, I missed most of these hits of the eighties and nineties while I was in medical school and psychiatric training, so they have the fascination of novelty for me. I’d never ever heard of Simply Red, for example, yet a quick reconnaissance reveals that the group was a monster.

At best the selected tunes have a ‘catchiness’, but generally the videos appear so dated and cliched and cringe-worthy that I find myself wondering how the proverbial alien visitor would judge the accomplishments of earthlings were he or she to be exposed to this epitome of human expression. Were these songs and artists truly so popular andau courant at the time? And, speaking of times, what’s going on now?

I’m in the dark about the now of popular song, and my exposure to rap and hip-hop - which has come mainly via the odd movie - leaves me repulsed.

But going to this supermarket now, compared to a year ago, is a joyous experience - not because of the music videos, but because of the absence of masks and the absence of those chilling Plexiglas barriers that had been erected during New Zealand’s covid nightmare at the checkout stations. They have been done away with at this particular store, and I will note with commendation that this same particular store was in theavant garde when it came to reestablishing a normal - others stores in the Wellington region have kept these senseless and useless barriers in perpetuity, for which reason I shun them.

Brisk and efficient as I am on my Friday nights, I nonetheless observe the flow of youth and ebullience in central Wellington at the New World supermarket - aptly monikered - and wonder if such energy can be suppressed again if another manufactured pandemic were to be foisted upon us.

According to the once-venerable New York Times covid is ‘officially’ over. Yet here in New Zealand, whose lockdowns were the envy of globalist control-freaks, and where excess mortality is a hidden but significant fact of life, the penumbra of oppression persists. The population accepts without question man-made climate change as indisputable fact, and for the most part this same unthinking population applauds the terribly destructive and erroneous governmental policies that led to an irrational and wrong-headed response to a phony pandemic, inclusive of inoculation mandates that cost many a person his or her job - or life, for that matter.

I recently addressed members of a local Rotary Club about the New Zealand covid response, and took the opportunity to voice my criticisms. I am happy to report that I was not stoned during this occasion, and that even among a heavily compliant audience a few dared raise their hands and make some peeps that questioned the official agenda. I was impressed mostly, however, by the sheer uncritical acceptance of what the government with its media phalanx pushed: that covid was lethal, that lockdowns and masks and ‘social’ distancing were necessary, and that the one-size-fits-all jab was a panacea.

Perhaps I planted a seed when I asked of the assembly what happened to the flu when covid was rampant - and perhaps my presenting an example of a jab exemption denied to a health practitioner suffering from severe myocarditis after his first inoculation tickled a few brain cells - or perhaps not. It’s hard to tell.

But perhaps people of the future - if there is a future - will look back upon this utter madness with the same strange fascination I have for those archaic music videos at the Wellington New World, wondering how in our world such lame and cliched tripe and dross could ever have been considered so compelling and popular back in the day.

Although I yearn for the time when I can visit the supermarket without the bother of its inescapably loud barrage of rhythmic oldies, and dream about the pleasures of shopping in silence, I recognize that at the very least this store has had the great good sense of demonstrating a commitment tonormal - as opposed to new-normal - human interaction.

This speaks volumes to me, and at decibels high enough to render cream-cheese sales-pitch background music eminently palatable.

Emanuel E. Garcia, MD

July 2023